Catwoman never cried. The alien sensation unnerved her and threatened her spirit. She slid down to her knees and wrapped her arms protectively around her head. She prayed for rage and hatred to sustain her. The fire rose slowly, restoring her strength, drying her tears. She slipped the caps over her fingertips and bared her teeth at the closed door.
She couldn't reenter the room. The fire wasn't burning hot enough, not yet, so she attacked the door and the frame around it, leaving deep scratches in the wood.
"You'll die, Eddie Lobb." Catwoman's hoarse whisper filled the empty apartment. "You'll die for this. You'll meet the spirit of every tiger, every cat, who died to satisfy your greed and lust. You'll beg for mercy. But if won't come, and death will be only the beginning of your punishment."
Chapter Ten
Catwoman made her way back to her apartment. She headed directly to the training mats, without pausing to shed the costume. Ever cautious of their benefactor's moods, the four-footed cats made themselves scarce. With glowing, green-gold eyes they watched from safe places as the two-footed cat contorted herself.
Selina intended to work out until she collapsed. Her superb condition fought against her. Her body routinely made the near-magical switch from ordinary physical metabolism to sheer will and determination. Through the dead hours when the city was almost quiet, Selina pursued exhaustion without catching it.
With her palms on the floor, her back arched, and her toes pointed toward heaven, she straightened her arms into a handstand, then flexed them until her skull bumped the floor. She repeated this act---the impoverished gymnast's bench press---ten... twenty... fifty times before swinging her body down for an equally tortured version of a sit-up. In time, lactic acid and dehydration made every move an exercise in pain, but Selina's mind remained sharp. The images she'd brought out of Eddie Lobb's apartment grew more vivid and real, more horrifying with each repetition.
Her vision blurred as sweat trickled across her face. She let her eyes close, then opened them with a shudder. She lost her balance. She tucked and rolled into a cross-legged sitting position with her back curled. With a defeated sigh, Selina relaxed. Her forehead rested against her ankles. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. Her mind's eye was filled with tigers, lions, cheetahs, panthers, and leopard; skulls and bones; and glowing, reproachful eyes.
What are you going to do about us? they asked in overlapping chorus.
Selina made a fist and pounded weakly on the floor beside her.
"I'll kill him. I swear I'll kill him."
What are you going to do about us?
She knew how to kill Eddie Lobb: stake out his home. His kind---the kind that collected relics and hid them behind layers of locks---always came back to restore itself amid forbidden treasure. All she had to do was watch and wait. She could feel her claws sink into his neck; feel the flesh separate as she pulled upward, outward; see the look in his eyes, just before he died, when he realized that a cat had come to claim him.
Then what? Did she leave Eddie Lobb in his blood, surrounded by his obscene collection, for the Gotham City Police to find? Did killing Eddie Lobb end anything but Eddie Lobb? What about Rose, what about the collection?
One of those questions was pathetically easy to answer. With regard to Rose D'Onofreo, Selina Kyle couldn't have cared less. Rose was an accident, an innocent, insignificant and no longer important. If the nuns could salvage her mind, so much the better; if not, well, that was okay too. What Eddie Lobb had done to Rose was a consequence of his corruption. If it hadn't been Rose, it would have been someone else---it would become someone else if Selina and Catwoman didn't stop Eddie Lobb.
But what about his relics, his fetishes? Did she try to remove them herself? In garbage bags tossed into an alley or dumpster? Should she turn his apartment into a funeral pyre? That would put his neighbors at risk. Were they more or less innocent than Rose?
Selina shook her head violently and growled with primitive anguish.
"I don't know what to do," she confessed, regretting---for a moment---that she lived without friends or family, with only the cats and Catwoman as advisers. For another moment she considered going to the mission. Her thoughts reeled---rather like seeing every scene from a movie simultaneously. She watched herself enter Old MoJo's office, tell her tale, while the veiled woman laughed herself int a frenzy. The humiliation Selina felt was real, even if the scenes she imagined were not.
She sat where she was, not moving but not falling asleep, either---simply waiting for things to change, to get worse.
Worse came in the form of small piece of warm, wet sandpaper rasping her cheek: a cat harvesting the salt of her exertions. Selina cocked her head and squinted. The gray tiger kitten. Had she expected anyone else? Pretty soon she was going to have to give the little guy a name. Slipping her hand beneath his plump barrel-belly, Selina hoisted him into the air. She swiveled her wrist, thinking about names. He gouged the air with half-grown claws and bared his milk teeth.
"Not afraid of anything, are you?"
Selina lowered him to the floor. He arched his back once his toes touched down. His tail shot up and the soft kitten-fur fluffed like milkweed down. He hissed mightily. She reached for him; he stood his ground, undaunted by her larger claws.
"So what if I'm a hundred times bigger than you, right? You're a regular warrior---" Her thoughts nose-dived inward. Selina forgot the kitten attacking her fingers. "A regular warrior. A Wilderness Warrior."
The tension and anguish evaporated. Selina had the solution. She'd had it from the beginning without recognizing it. The militant defenders of predators, the ones who had taught her how to recognize the problem, would surely have the wherewithal to solve it. The Wilderness Warriors would deal with Eddie Lobb's collection while Catwoman dealt with Eddie himself. Possibilities, probabilities, and---she hoped---inevitabilities clamored for her attention.
"Later."
Now that she had an answer, Selina could feel the abuse she'd heaped on her body, and smell the rank costume. She kept it on while she stood in the shower, scrubbing it, then herself, in the steamy water. She quenched her thirst in a final cold rinse. After stamping on the catsuit and wringing it out with her hands, Selina threw it over the shower head and, wrapped in a towel, left the bathroom.
The sun was up. The room was painfully bright and the cats were demanding breakfast. Selina couldn't remember the taste of her greasy-spoon steak, but the effort of opening a can of tuna fish seemed too much to contemplate. She filled a bowl with dry cat food and put it on the floor for the cats to fight over, then dug a handful out for herself. The kibble crunched like pretzels and tasted much better than she expected. After chomping through a second handful, she left the bag propped against the bed.
The room was bright, summertime hot, and stuffy when Selina woke up in the middle of the afternoon. Her head was throbbing; no wonder the cats preferred canned food. Fending off the light with an upraised hand, she navigated to the refrigerator. There was a double-sized container of orange juice in the freezer. She was too impatient to let it thaw properly and ate it like ice cream instead. The effect was indescribable and nearly instantaneous. When her eyes came back into focus, Selina was ready to take on the world.